Understanding the Subscription Models for Paid Content

Over the last few decades, one of the fastest growing trends followed by the online businesses is the subscription model for their products and services. Investors place a high value on digital organisations that have implemented the subscription services.

Before implementing the subscription based revenue model for your website, take a look at some of the most common subscription types in the market today.

Metered

This model allows the readers to read a set number of articles before the subscription is required.

Freemium

Under this model, most of the content available on the publisher’s website is free, but to access the premium articles or a section of website requires a subscription.

Hardwall

This is the least used subscription model known as the hard paywall. In this model, readers require subscription to access majority of the website.

Pay as you go

Known as the convenience model, users need to pay only for the usage of a product or service when needed.

Media lines

A recent addition to the subscription family, this model works with the idea to offer a variety of media types, including audio books, music, television shows and movies packaged together or separately subscribed.

Varied access

This model is based on the idea of providing different levels of content access for subscribers based on their subscription plan. Introduced by Netflix, this model is used by companies that offer a set of song downloads each month, access a certain number of e-books or television episodes.

Partnership

This model is mainly associated with Amazon Prime services. The basic idea behind the model is to package the digital content along with non-digital content or services as subscription. Users pay a particular fee to access these services as a whole.

The benefits of implementing subscription models

With the widespread popularity, subscription models have become a new face of digital publishing. And now, let us look at how well you would benefit from these subscription models.

Reduced dependency on advertising revenue

As a publisher or a newsroom, marketing using ads and generating revenue out of it is common. With the inception of subscription models, the dependency on ad revenue generation decreases.

Personalized marketing

Subscription marketing combined with reliable, detailed, tracking and management system allows you to create personalized offers and segment readers. This increases your potential for up selling and cross-selling other services.

Increased customer engagement/loyalty

Continued use of service with a brand helps build loyalty as a reader becomes attached to the website’s content.

Lifetime customer value

Greater customer inertia transitions from the purchase phase with the combination of lower cost can help increase the value of customers.

Recurring revenue stream

The subscription models can be sometimes better than one-time purchases. Readers who are happy with the service are more likely to renew and over time you can predict rates to help factor more revenue projections.

Publishers, if you are producing content that consistently adds value to reader’s lives, they will subscribe. Make sure content available on subscription is not available elsewhere online.

Quintype, has an offering to help you monetize your premium content using the paywall and subscriptions with integrated payment solutions. You can also easily generate revenue with push notification with strategic audience targeting.

To know more about how you can use the subscription models through our CMS, send in your queries to sales@quintype.com.